Elective Treatments / Surgeriesare best done after adequate research on hospital options from all angles
Almost 70% of illnesses that need hospitalization are “elective” in nature; meaning, you can choose to have the treatment at your time of convenience (over a few weeks or months). In other words these treatments are not an emergency. For all such treatments, it is a wise practice to explore options available for you. This exploration will help you not only to get information about the right medical doctor but also all the information about hospitals so as to be empowered to choose the “ideal” option amongst numerous “good” options
The purpose of the medagg platform is to help the patient with this awareness of multiple healthcare provider options at a single place along with the personalized guidance of an experienced healthcare management expert in the “care custodian”
Comprehensive analysis of options is an arduous process if not done on a platform such as Medagg
The process of exploring a specialist hospital is not an easy one without a common platform that brings all the hospitals together for comparison. The patient or patient family are either having to visit multiple hospitals personally to get details on treatment modality, cost, insurance, other hospital services, etc or having to visit multiple websites and make numerous phone calls. The search typically starts with something like “top hospitals in Chennai” on google or “treatment options for knee replacement surgery” or “average cost of total knee replacement”. Medagg brings the facility of a personal “care custodian” who can do this comparison for you and guide you through the exploration process step by step
Tamil Nadu is great healthcare destination where you will find numerous options which are all “good” – but how do you know what is “ideal” for you?
For many decades, Tamil Nadu has remained a Mecca for healthcare. But this could cause a “problem of plenty” – we have many “good” hospitals but how to I choose the “ideal” hospital that suits me? What are the factors that I should consider? The Medagg Care Custodian helps you navigate this process. Many aggregation platforms that are available today help find doctors or with appointment with the doctor. But the exploration of options for the patient does not stop only with the doctor’s advise. So the “search doctors” option that multiple aggregation platforms provide has been expanded to hospitals and their services by the Medagg platform. For example, when vicinity is an important consideration for patient convenience, why stop with a search like “physicians near me”. Medagg helps you with “hospitals near me”. In fact the Medagg mobile App tells you about hospitals near you automatically depending on your location.
In the case of complex illnesses, you will also have to analyze treatment options apart from hospital options
Sometimes treatment modalities could differ from clinician to clinician and hospital to hospital. One should ensure that he has gone through the pros and cons of all the modalities before choosing the right option. The common patient is not in a position to know these modalities and any amount of googling only confuses the patient more. This again is an area where the Madagg care custodians, who are experienced hospital operators, come in to help the patient make the wise decision.
In this modern world of medicine, inter disciplinary treatment has come in to help patients in a big way. For example, there could be procedures that an interventional radiologist can do for a patient who is suffering from knee pain. Conventional wisdom will take the patient to the orthopedic doctor. But Medagg aims to bring about the awareness of new age treatments for the patient to feel empowerd to choose from.
In certain cases, a patient may be advised for surgery but due to multiple reasons the patient may not be willing to go in for a surgery. However, there are other ways by which the patient’s pain may be alleviated even without having to go through surgery. Pain management as a field of medicine has advanced to great heights in this space.
Cost is a key parameter to take into comparison apart from insurance acceptability, co-payment etc
Cost optimization of treatment is an important factor to be considered in choosing the hospital. The common man does not know the nuances of cost optimization when it comes to medical treatment. The medagg care custodians who are experienced in the field of hospital management and financial counselling within hospitals help you optimize the cost of treatment for you. On an average, patients who have obtained treatment through the Medagg platform have ended up spending 30% less than what they would have otherwise spent. This is accomplished by multiple levers including the below:
- Identifying a doctor of choice to do the surgery in a different hospital that he visits. The common patient may not be aware of this
- Identifying alternate providers for diagnostics as well as post-surgical recuperation / physiotherapy
- Identifying hospitals where the insured patient’s co-pay amount may be lower
- Identifying specific camps where a procedure is done within the patients budget
Your second opinionshould be unbiased and you should feel empowered to take an informed choice on your treatment and hospital options
We need to first of all understand (a) what is a second opinion (b) Why get a second opinion (c) How to get a second opinion and (d) can I get a second opinion from another doctor
A second opinion meaning, “alternate medical opinion” is the right of any patient and it is legally covered under the patient rights and responsibilities in Indian law. Before a patient goes in for any complex treatment, it is always a good practice to get a second opinion. It is important to obtain such second opinions from hospitals and clinics which are not affiliated with the primary consultant doctor from where we got our first opinion. This is not because we cannot trust our doctors but to ensure that we have ensured that we have indeed explored everything needs to be understood about the treatment. Often times, there could be instances when a small change in the treatment modality from doctor to doctor might mean a lot to us and might make us shift towards a particular doctor
In a lot of cases such second opinions can be obtained using just our medical report from the first opinion. Medagg can help find doctors from this category of who will be in a position to give such unbiased opinion. Online doctor consultations can also be organized to get a second opinion. This helps the patient avoid having to visit multiple hospitals to get such opinions. Many patients also choose to go through their general physician who can be a guide for them in finding the right second opinion doctor.
Some of the common areas where we find patients look for second opinion include Cancer second opinion and Knee replacement second opinion. Medical second opinions and radiology second opinions are also quite common across multiple specialties.
In summary, the Medagg platform can make the hospitalization journey a lot more smoother for patients while also helping the patient reduce the treatment cost substantially. Call Medagg at ……. Or write to us at …….. Also